The very first ‘young gun’ to pass through the New Zealand Geographic Trust Young Gun mentoring scheme realised pretty rapidly what life as a photographic professional was all about. New Zealand Geographic photographer Rob Suisted took Bryce McQuillan out to Mana Island—a steepsided island fortress battered by winter westerlies 2.5 km off Wellington’s wild west coast. It’s regarded as bug central, hosting a large population of giant weta and a bizarre array of creepy crawlies endangered on the mainland.

‘It was the chance of a lifetime,’ says McQuillan. ‘Rob taught me some tricks for how to work with animals, to move slowly, and not to look directly at birds when approaching.’

Photographing for two days and half the night in torrential rain added to the technical difficulty of the shoot, but didn’t dissuade either the photographers or their subjects. One of the world’s rarest skinks, giant weevils, flax slugs and weta of unusual size paraded before the lens, all glistening with raindrops.

‘Bryce was great at finding big insects and spiders to photograph,’ says Suisted. ‘His eyes were continually popping out of his head—this was his first time meeting many of our large species, weta especially, and his first trip to a protected ecosystem such as this.’

Many of the species on Mana are examples of island gigantism—a biological phenomenon where the size of animals isolated from predators on an island increases dramatically over generations—and McQuillan got some tips for bringing out the best in his monstrous subjects.

‘Rob taught me to wait for special behaviour, get lower angles to reduce shadows, and when you’re shooting macro at night, to light the background as well as the subject.’

Suisted also suggested that his young apprentice get closer to nature, so Mc- Quillan will be doing just that—applying for DOC’s ranger programme, with camera of course.

Read more on Rob’s blog :
http://blog.naturespic.com/2009/06/15